OBS/FIRST OBS

[BLT2023]

Hello,

I am a new SAS coder working on a homework problem that has stumped me. The question is: Write SAS code which will read in 10 observations from the ‘SASHelp.Cars’ data set, starting with the 70th observation.

Below is the code I wrote for my answer:

DATA        WORK.Illus;

         SET  SASHelp.Cars (FIRSTOBS = 70 OBS = 10);

            RUN;

However, when I run this code, my log gives me an error and two warnings:

 Errors (1)
 Warnings (2)
 Notes (2)
 
 1          OPTIONS NONOTES NOSTIMER NOSOURCE NOSYNTAXCHECK;
 68         
 69         DATAWORK.Illus;
 70         SETSASHelp.Cars(FIRSTOBS = 70OBS = 10);
 ERROR: FIRSTOBS option > OBS option - no data to read from file SASHELP.CARS.
 71         RUN;
 
 NOTE: The SAS System stopped processing this step because of errors.
 WARNING: The data set WORK.ILLUS may be incomplete.  When this step was stopped there were 0 observations and 0 variables.
 WARNING: Data set WORK.ILLUS was not replaced because this step was stopped.
 NOTE: DATA statement used (Total process time):
       real time           0.00 seconds
       user cpu time       0.00 seconds
       system cpu time     0.00 seconds
       memory              530.93k
       OS Memory           21152.00k
       Timestamp           10/26/2023 07:03:03 PM
       Step Count                        42  Switch Count  0
       Page Faults                       0
       Page Reclaims                     52
       Page Swaps                        0
       Voluntary Context Switches        0
       Involuntary Context Switches      0
       Block Input Operations            0
       Block Output Operations           8
       
 
 72         
 73         OPTIONS NONOTES NOSTIMER NOSOURCE NOSYNTAXCHECK;
 83 

What am I missing? Thanks for any help.

[PaigeMiller · Accepted solution]

 70         SETSASHelp.Cars(FIRSTOBS = 70OBS = 10);
 ERROR: FIRSTOBS option > OBS option - no data to read from file SASHELP.CARS.

There are two problems here ... first is that there is no space after FIRSTOBS=70 (although strangely that doesn't seem to be an error)

The second is explained by the ERROR message. You can't have FIRSTOBS > OBS, so you must have OBS to be greater than or equal to FIRSTOBS. With that hint, what do you think OBS should be here?

[BLT2023]

Oh! 79? FIRST OBS = 70, +9 gives me 10 observations. Got it. Thank you so much!